Arduino Alternatives: 5 Microcontrollers You Should Know

Arduino Alternatives: 5 Microcontrollers You Should Know

Even if you're a casual microcontroller dabbler you've probably heard of the biggest names in the business: Arduino, BeagleBone, and Raspberry Pi. However, there are less renowned but still high-quality microcontrollers that you may have missed but should get to know.

MSP430 LaunchPad

MSP430 LaunchPad

LaunchPad is a low-cost, low-power-consumption microcontroller from Texas Instruments, the manufacturer of BeagleBone. The Value Line LaunchPad is available for $4.30 in a kit that comes with a second chip. The MSP430 chip also offers a power-saving mode that awakens almost instantly, which may be perfect for remote sensors. At a fraction of the price of Arduino, LaunchPad looks like a good alternative, at least for relatively simple projects. However, it packs 512 bytes of RAM compared with Arduino Uno's 2 kB, so Arduino might still win out for more complicated work.